Dating Methodology and its Associated Assumptions

Not in the least true. In addition to the Lake Suigetsu data, there's assorted dating from astronomy and dendrochronology. I think Percy's raised enough doubt about that "incident" that if you want to use it to support your argument, you're going to have to actually substantiate it.

I'm not being nasty or posting insults - I'm merely asking you to back up this claim of continuous, widespread fraud on the part of all of the hundreds of poor grad students worldwide that have worked in this field. Has every one of them been God-sense-ectomized? Really? And they're all willing to throw out data that cost sometimes a couple of thousand dollars per data point just to win schoolkids for the International Secularist Conspiracy?I think you and/or Milton are making these claims up out of the whole cloth. Produce some evidence that discarding data is a widespread practice, or retract the claim.

Hi Percy: "In 1991, Oxford University’s radiocarbon accelerator unit dated some rock paintings found in the South African bush as being around 1,200 years old. Almost as old as Guess Who. But then an art teacher named Joan Ahrens turned up and proved that they were her students’ paintingsthey had been stolen by vandals from her garden in Capetown." At least you are consistent.Any evidence which refutes your sacred cows is asserted a lie.Whether Ahrens was a teacher or student is irrelevant to the fact that the dating technique could not be anymore comparable to reliability but a black box.

In the waste basket. This message has been edited by WILLOWTREE, 10-22-2004 06:05 PM

When I think the term "lie" is called for, then I will use the term myself. Please do not put words in my mouth. If you ascribe the term to me again then I will have my first occasion to use it at this board.About the "any evidence" part, that's the problem with your story: it offers no evidence. A good deal of our discussions with you seems to revolve around your inability to understand what constitutes evidence. It wasn't just whether she's a teacher or not. It's whether she actually painted them or not. It's that there's no mention of any actual scientists who did this work. It's that there's no reference to where the work was published. There's no way to check out this story. Basically it comes down to a story where some scientists dated aboriginal paintings to 1200 years old that were actually contempary from someone's garden. The stories are inconsistent and unsupported, not to mention difficult to believe. You believe them because you want to believe them, not because they offer any evidence.On our side of the discussion, we can cite actual scientific literature supporting the validity of radiometric dating. If you recall, a couple weeks ago I posted a few pages from Dalrymple's book about the age of the earth that contained a large number of citations, probably at least 30. And that's just a tiny percentage of all the work that's been done on radiometric dating.A convincing case supporting unreliabilty in radiometric dating would have to include citations to the original sources that contain the errors, and citations to how they were shown wrong, including explanations or speculations about the causes of the errors.--Percy

Says Milton, but has he looked there? Or isn't that just an assumption on his part? Actually, "vile unsubstantiated slander" would be more like it - after all, he's accusing literally every geologist of fraud.Doesn't the fact that you're able to dig up these examples of bad dating pretty much prove that there's no sort of scientific "conspiracy" to conceal bad dating?Show me all the dates that scientists are supposed to be rejecting - that is, the reams and reams of data you and Milton say they're tossing out. Surely you wouldn't make that claim without support, would you?

What about the discard dates in the KBS Tuff dating fiasco ?Those discard dates ranged from one half million to 17.5 million years. (already posted - do you want me to retrieve them ?)This is the precise context of the accusation.Milton claims they were only discarded because they did not fit in with other previously known dating determinations.How ironic that the accept dates fit in nicely with everything ever published ?Now enter the unplanned snapshot dating incident and volcanic lava and even in archaeology where the date of Egyptian mummy's are known and a technique fails miserably.Our only point is that these spot incidences provide an objective falsification that has yet to be satisfactorily answered or appeased.

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In the waste basket.

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In that case, how do you know about these discordant dates?(added by edit)

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Milton, page 51:
"Published dating figures always conform to preconceived dates and NEVER contradict those dates. If all the rejected dates were retrieved from the waste basket and added to the published dates, the combined results would show that the dates produced are the scatter that one would expect by chance alone."

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And how does Milton know this? Could it be pure biased speculation on his part?THis is utter nonsense and you have fallen for it...This message has been edited by edge, 10-22-2004 10:07 PM

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What about the discard dates in the KBS Tuff dating fiasco ?

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As I asked above, if they were discarded, how do you know about them?

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Those discard dates ranged from one half million to 17.5 million years. (already posted - do you want me to retrieve them ?)

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Obviously, there weren't discarded, they were explained.

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This is the precise context of the accusation.

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Your context makes no sense.

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Milton claims they were only discarded because they did not fit in with other previously known dating determinations.

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No. They were not used because there was a valid reason that they were in error.

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How ironic that the accept dates fit in nicely with everything ever published ?

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Well, as I remember it didn't fit exactly. But that's not the point.

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Now enter the unplanned snapshot dating incident and volcanic lava and even in archaeology where the date of Egyptian mummy's are known and a technique fails miserably.

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Yes, when abused, radiometric dating does not work. Especially when conducted by avowed YECs determined to prove that they don't work. Doesn't this tell you something?

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Our only point is that these spot incidences provide an objective falsification that has yet to be satisfactorily answered or appeased.

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Nonsense, again. They prove that science cannot be trusted to YECs.

That too is false. You have been shown that is a false assertion by direct post to the interview with Ian McDougall who did the dating.In case you missed it, here is the link one more time to the interview.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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"In 1991, Oxford University’s radiocarbon accelerator unit ...

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What the heck is a radiocarbon accelerator?

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...dated some rock paintings found in the South African bush as being around 1,200 years old.

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Found? By whom? How were they sampled? This story is so full of holes they create a negative gravity anomaly on this message board.

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Almost as old as Guess Who.

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I'd rather not.

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But then an art teacher named Joan Ahrens turned up and proved that they were her students’ paintingsthey had been stolen by vandals from her garden in Capetown."

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Riiiight! WT, your chain of custody on these samples grows more and more tenuous. And you trust Milton as a source?

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Consider the Geological Column (Van Eysinga/1975) and look at the thickness of the rocks in each period compared with the length of time assigned to those periods.

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Note that there is remarkable consistency between assigned age and thickness of deposit. For instance the Cretaceous period is said to have lasted 65 million years and is 15,000 meters thick - an average annual rate of deposition of 0.2 millimeters.

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Now look at the Silurian period: this, too yields an average rate of deposition of about 0.2 millimeters per year - as does the Ordovician, the Devonian, the Carboniferous, and the rest. It is only when we come to relatively modern times in the Cenozioc era that rates of deposition vary much, and here they appear to speed up slightly.

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This is a very remarkable finding. One naturally expects Uniformitarian geology to favor uniformity, but this is too much of a good thing.

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WT, did it ever occur to you that perhaps column was scaled to time and not thickness? This is so silly, that I cannot fathom. You have been taken in by a professional here.Geological systems are not the same thickness in every location. This is well understood by geologists. To make a general column it does not really make sense to assign a thickness.

Your charge of fraud is kind of difficult to substantiate in the face of the openness with which it was conceded from the outset that the tuff would be difficult to date. Some dating is as easy as a photograph. Other dating is more like a jigsaw puzzle, and the tuff was like that. The consistency of the dating and the wide agreement about how old things are comes from the reliability of radiometric dating. If it weren't for the consistent benchmark it provides, scientists would long ago have fractured into divergent groups, each with their own set of favorite dates.The only way that agreement could be reached without reliable dating techniques is if there were secret scientific meetings where it was decided how old everything was going to be, and where groups of scientists were assigned to conduct literally hundreds and hundreds of fake field studies so they could write fake papers announcing the predecided dates, and where after decades and decades no one has broken the code of silence. That must seem ridiculous even to you.Radiometric decay is a very reliable clock, and other dating techniques like ice varves, tree rings and ice cores are also very helpful. The real world is a dynamic environment that stirs up all the data, oftentimes making it a real challenge to tease out the correct dates. But scientists and laboratories have all the necessary training and equipment, and this is why there are so many, many scientific papers providing reliable and consistent radiometric dates across all of earth's eras.--Percy

That's one. If you're right, there should be millions.You're a little short. Keep working, though. The fact that there are so few proves us right, not you.

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The only way that agreement could be reached without reliable dating techniques is if there were secret scientific meetings where it was decided how old everything was going to be, and where groups of scientists were assigned to conduct literally hundreds and hundreds of fake field studies so they could write fake papers announcing the predecided dates, and where after decades and decades no one has broken the code of silence. That must seem ridiculous even to you.

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Not only that, but can you imagine the expense of conducting an indefinite number of analyses until you got the right one to satisfy the committe?